Watch Dogs is a sprawling game you can sink hours into, arguably an Ubisoft specialty. And in some respects, it’s a spectacular games. And in others, it’s a total trainwreck. Having put twenty hours or so into it, you can make a compelling case that it’s both the best and the worst game of the year, even at only the halfway point.

The Case For

In its basics, Watch Dogs is actually a superb refinement of what’s arguably Ubisoft’s house style at this point. It’s a shooter with a mix of stealth and gunplay options, where how you achieve the mission is generally open-ended. Everything is rock-solid and makes sense, although some mechanics, such as driving, will take a little getting used to.

The “hacking” mechanic, arguably the central selling point, is more than just a gimmick and actually adds a lot to the game; before you approach any area, you’ll want to get behind cover and see if you can’t tap into a few cameras and get the lay of the land, not to mention create distractions and thin the numbers.

Furthermore, the game rather cleverly makes use of the concept of line-of-sight. The QR puzzles scattered around the game world are cleverly used and have the mark of a good puzzle: Once you work out the basics, it all clicks smoothly into place. “Riding the cameras” is often a fun way to solve problems and unlock new areas.

In short, as something you play, it’s a great game. Where it falls down is the trappings surrounding the play.

The Case Against

One doesn’t come to an Ubisoft game expecting Shakespeare, but even by their standards, this game might be some of the worst writing the company has ever put out. Take, for example, Aiden Pearce, or Smartphone Punisher, since that’s the extent of his character development. Oh, except that we learn for a brilliant social engineer and master tactician, Aiden is kind of a dimwit when it comes to spotting obvious villains. But not as dimwitted as the villains, who, despite you being famous as “the Vigilante” practically from the start of the game, don’t notice you look just like that guy on the news killing all their men.

The game’s script is filled with problems like this. Iraq, seemingly a stock gangbanger character, turns out to be a master manipulator playing off the perception of his neighborhood to mask a larger scheme, an opportunity that’s utterly wasted in favor of cheesy stock villains. Maurice, the poor schmuck you learn was forced into trying to kill Aiden, is a weepy annoyance. It becomes distracting how bad some of the writing is.

There are a few technical problems with the game as well. The police are infamously hard to shake, partially because the game wants you to perform cinematic vehicle takedowns. One problem: Those takedowns zoom in for a nice, slow-motion view of the wreck… while you’re still driving away and trying to dodge obstacles and other cars. Considering the relentless nature of the cops in this game, that means pursuits take far longer as you wreck or even get killed.

Finally, and most curious, in terms of sound, this game is just embarrassing. Brian Reitzell, the composer for Hannibal, hands in a flat generic score matched only by the absolutely stock selections of pop music on the soundtrack. Even the ambient sound is a mess, looping constantly and worse, noticeably.

A Great And Frustrating Thing

The end result is a game that’s a lot of fun to play, but filled with constant nagging little problems that, especially when you’re forced into a scripted police chase, suddenly come to the fore to make it irritating. It’s a game not annoying enough to make you stop playing, but after sneaking through a carefully designed setpiece where you headshot foes and sneak behind them to clear the area, only to find the alarm you were trying not to trip is triggered anyway as part of the script. It’s a game where a thrilling string of missions and takedowns is capped off with a ten-minute chase scene where you just want to ditch the cops.

And thus, that mix of fun and annoyance makes us believe there won’t be a more frustrating game this year. Hopefully the sequel has enough time to tweak, to make it simply the best game of the year.

I just got the game for Father’s Day and I love it so far. As a native Chicagoan, had a bit of vested interest in seeing how my hometown looks digitally. To the game itself, I agree with your pros and cons. Those cop chases are a bitch and a half. Admittedly, I’m still learning the game, but all my GTAV driving skill credits turned into electives in the College of Watch Dogs.

I agree that the chases are geared so that you have to use the environment against them, fine, but at the same time, Chicago PD are not Seal Team Six, their pursuit skills are better than a pack of Direwolves after Lannister blood. I have escaped a few times from “po-po”, but both accident and design, but very little of it was due to using the traffic lights or the barriers. First time I wish the game had warned you that they would continue to look for you after they lost visual sight of you with the yellow search circles. My brief escape victory was over as they started all up again. The second time, I managed to find the one corner of Chicago without a camera and hide and waited.

All in all, great game so far, Chicago bias aside. I’m looking forward to finishing it up leisurely and exploring my digital hometown.

Once you update your hacking to include steam pipes, losing the cops becomes much easier. Not sure what upgrade did this, but at some point the hackable objects will highlight in blue if it will take down a pursuer. Everything driving related is improved at this point.

Thanks for all the great tips everyone! Another tip that, “stupid me”, didn’t realize was to do look in the rear view THEN activate the barriers or bollars. Ugh, I’m so dumb sometimes. I haven’t gotten the upgrade points to get to the steam pipes

Hard police chases i can deal with. But they are all over my dank when i whip a gun out for more than 3 seconds. I mean this is Chicago right? Are people not use to that by now, why they snitchin so quick?

My personal favorite is that it’s area sensitive, so if you’re inside a zone, you can spray the areas with bullets no problem. Sit just outside and shoot a guy in the head with a silencer, HELLO POLICE

And i didn’t even realize that Dan, good to know. I’ve mostly been driving around and not doing much of anything else, will probably get into campaign tonight. Doing that i realized like you pointed out the music in this game sucks!

Biggest disappointment of the year for me thus far: (1) Graphics on the Ps4 version STINK, at least in comparison to what was demoed at E3 in previous years. They flat out showed some bullshit that WASN’T the final game.

(2) Story and dialogue are subpar for a game with these production values, though the voice acting isn’t terrible. Obviously we’ve all played games with worse writing but c’mon Ubi, this is a bad effort to say the least.

(3) Hacking is cool in some parts but it’s impact on the gameplay was waaaaay overstated before release. Missions and side missions boil down to the same standards we’ve seen in countless ope-world games since the mid-200’s.

Why they didn’t just scrap everything and expand on the Spider Tank missions, making the entire game Spider Tan centric, I’ll neer understand. The Spider Tank is fucking awesome, it takes me right back to ghost in the Shell on PS1. SPIDER TANK!!!!

In summation: I can’t believe I waited for two years for this mediocre effort. It’s enough to make me not buy anymore cross-gen games entirely.

My biggest gripe with the game is take downs vs take outs. I usually shoot someone just to find that I was supposed to club them to death instead. What does it matter?! Just let me kill the bad guy how I want!

The Gang Hideouts I don’t mind because I feel like the world’s cruelest ninja. The Criminal Convoys, I get why they did it, but it’s annoying. “Your target is surrounded by people you’ve got to kill! But don’t shoot them in the face!” I believe if you shoot them in the knee, that qualifies as a non-lethal kill.”